


Pandora's Paradox

by Anonymous



Series: A Convergence Of Dreams - and other peculiar occurences [2]
Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, But also, Clay | Dream Angst (Video Blogging RPF), Clay | Dream-centric (Video Blogging RPF), DREAMON AU, Gen, Ranbob!Dream AU, The City of Mizu, The Village That Went Mad, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-14 13:33:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29046936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: In which there is Dream, and a Dreamon, and also Ranbob, and somehow, they're all deeply intertwined.And then there's the time travel.
Relationships: Clay | Dream & Karl Jacobs, Dream & Dream SMP Ensemble, Ranbob & Karl Jacobs
Series: A Convergence Of Dreams - and other peculiar occurences [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2129157
Comments: 25
Kudos: 232
Collections: Anonymous





	1. Chapter 1

Dream is the villain.

That much is clear from every scripture and book the great City of Mizu owns.  
No matter if it is from the accounts of Ranboo the scholar himself, or from the hymns in King George's glory, they all at least vaguely mention the masked sinister figure that was behind every bad thing that happened in the era of the SMP.

Ranbob loves studying history. He adores spending his time buried deep in the books, even more so than helping his father with mechanical maintenance around the generators. Life in the Underwater City of Mizu, as beautiful as it is, is also monotonous, and books allow him to disappear into different worlds, where it's sunny and no one is surrounded by water all the time. He has already read pretty much everything he could get his hands on, even things technically above his reading level of fourteen years. Journals, accounts, fairy tales, legends telling of distant lands and times. Mostly about the SMP though.

He knows that the Historian is considering him to become his apprentice. He'd said so at the last community gathering.

It's not a bad fit for him, theoretically. However, it would require Ranbob to choose his own ancestor as an idol. Only Ranboo followers become scholars themselves.  
He isn't too sure about that yet.  
He likes the guy, don't get him wrong (like, c'mon, without him he wouldn't even exist), but he still doesn't know if he wants to uphold all the things Ranboo stood for. He has the dedication and patience, but moral flexibility isn't his strong suit.  
Ranbob is pretty stubborn and doesn't like to change his viewpoints. Not the ideal trait for someone who is supposed to be always open to 'being proven wrong'.

Ranbob thinks of Dream, of the sermons that tell how his unwillingness to negotiate drove his allies away, and how he started war after war, and he scolds himself. You're supposed to learn from history, and Dream was the best example of what stubbornness could escalate to.

Still, he stalls on his idol choice as long as he can.

The decision is taken out of his hands when one day, the explorer group comes back with a new artifact.  
Followers of Sapnap are the only ones that are allowed to leave the City, to brave the dangerous world outside. Maybe once upon a time, Ranbob would have chosen that idol, if only so he could get to experience the real world for a change. Get to see the real sky, real forests and lakes, and land.

Then the group reveals what they had uncovered, presents the find in the community room before dinner.

After a perilous journey, ripe with encounters of hostile creatures, they had stumbled upon ruins, half-covered by dirt and weathered by the tooth of time. And buried deep, among black stone and obsidian columns, they had found an intact chest containing books and manuscripts. A true treasure trove, an event to celebrate! The community always loves new scriptures to debate over, to reaffirm the greatness of their ancestors.

But in Ranbob's opinion, the true crowning find is the mask at the bottom.

Growing up, Ranbob imagined the dreaded Dream's mask to be some demonic visage. A sinister grimace, huge eyebrows, maybe even fangs like those pictures of demons he found in that old 'Bibble 2' book.

Instead, inexplicably, it's a simple rounded disk, off-white, with a very stylized smiley face in the middle.  
Looking at it, Ranbob doesn't get what's supposed to be so intimidating about it, even while he's sure it's the original. Maybe the smile is a bit too life-less? Personally, he thinks it looks _happy_ almost. Harmless.

 _ **Valuable**_.

The rest of the city doesn't share his opinion. They decry the mask a cheap prop and lock it away. The journals, however, are kept. Most of them are indecipherable, written in code, and those that aren't are generously poured over, analyzed and plucked apart. Turns out, they were the plans and construction notes of a massive prison - Pandora's Vault. The famed place where the unkillable Dream was kept after his defeat, and the place where he died (presumably).

Ranbob looks at the neglected coded journals. There's something in there that draws him, and wouldn't it be a shame, to leave that much knowledge uncovered?

He makes his decision.

His father tells him how proud he is, and how proud his mother would be, to have him follow in her and their ancestor's footsteps.  
For days, people come to congratulate him, praise him for his choice (Though most say it was 'just what was expected', and he wants to bristle at the connotation. He's his _own_ individual, thank you, he already has nearly the same name-)  
Ranbob pretends to be excited all throughout the following ceremonies and celebrations. The rite of passage is a chore, the oath he takes is boring and long. He is restless and distracted, and only his reputation for being a bit of a daydreamer saves him from being looked at weird.

When he is finally alone with the historian, his new teacher with whom he'll be living, he asks for his first project.

He stands, gleaming eyes, and tells the man that he wants to translate the untranslatable journals.

The historian is skeptical. Such a huge project for one so young, he says, and perhaps he's right, but there's something burning that drives Ranbob, and he argues that he already knows most of the techniques and the history, he can handle it.

In the face of such passion, the kind-hearted man gives in quickly.

And so Ranbob gets his own room, a scholarly office.  
He sits with only one flickering light on, which might be bad for his eye-sight, but he can pretend that it's a candle.  
Before him, spread over the desk, are the coded journals, ready for him to unravel their secrets.

He pours over them, day after day. He tries key after key, but no progress. The symbols seem to correspond to letters at least, but he has the sinking feeling that it's doubly encoded.

Nights are spent awake, scribbling out notes and guesses. He shows himself more scarcely at mealtimes, preferring to take his plate with him to his office, eating while brainstorming possible solutions.

Until, _finally_ , he has a breakthrough.

He is so excited he doesn't even bother telling anyone, jumps right into translating instead, grabbing a random book off the pile.

And soon he realizes, that this is _Dream's journal_.

He could faint from elation. This is even better than any prison schematics! An account directly from the tyrant, a glimpse into the mind of the monster _himself_!

He feels feverous as he writes down translated word after word.

At first, all he gets is rambles. Pages of unfocused sentences, about adventures with friends, about the start of the SMP (it's interesting. None of the other journals had ever mentioned that King George, Warrior Sapnap, and Dream were close friends, before. Is it all lies? No, way too much detail for that).  
Then, slowly, discordant notes push in-between. There are parts where the stories just break off, and ever-longer paragraphs are filled with questions and no answers.

'Why?', mostly, repeatedly. 'When?', sometimes.

Then comes a point where the normal stories stop, and instead the questions fill up pages, more elaborate.

"Why did they leave me?" "Why am I here?" "Why can't they understand?" "When will I get out of here?" "When will I get another visitor?"

The ever-more-sloppy handwriting paints a picture of a man slowly losing himself, to the insanity of past actions and isolation. Ranbob can confidently state that the book must have been created during Dream's time in prison - makes sense, considering what else it was found with.

Looks like staying in it did the man no favor in the mental health department.

Ranbob doesn't want to admit it, but reading Dream's suffering spread over so many pages makes him feel at least a little bit sympathetic towards the man.

Then he comes across an anomaly.

A whole page free, except for one word in the middle. It's scratched out furiously, but Ranbob can make out 'ig', an 'm', and 're'.

He frowns but moves on quickly.

Except the scratched-out word reappears. At first, interspersed randomly on some parts, then more frequently, until the pages are black and unrecognizable from spilled ink, obscuring the rest of the journal.

Ranbob feels a shiver climb down his spine.

It doesn't mean anything, he tells himself. Just even more signs of a damaged mind.

With the first journal translated, he finally shows himself.  
His teacher is excited. As a historian, he can appreciate the work, and he is surprised but proud that Ranbob managed to translate it. He says so, and they spend an evening throwing theories at each other over what the contents could mean.

The approval from the rest of the community is... limited.

Ranbob is aware that without the scholarly view, the journals themselves could be viewed as a negative thing. Dream was the villain, after all. But he's still surprised when he's met with discontent and outright disapproval, even _hostility_ from some. As if _he_ chose to write those journals himself, as if _he_ was at fault for their contents.

He shuns himself before anyone can do it for him.

He spends even more time in his own private space, and even his father sees him scarcely anymore. His fifteenth birthday comes and goes by unmentioned. The shadows beneath Ranbob's eyes grow as he throws himself into his work.

The contents of the rest of the journals get only more disturbing. Interesting, sure, but disturbing.  
There are a few outliers he's baffled by - 'How to get girls', for example, written as if the author was either high or so sarcastic it's scathing. He kind of doubts Dream actually wrote that, but it fits the handwriting, if not the code used.

Overall, there's a progression to be seen. The journal he'd translated first seems to fit somewhere at the start of the timeline - it's at least comprehensible. Most others are filled with nothing but senseless scribbles and crossed out lines, words without context, and, in increasingly large quantities, smiley faces.  
He'd have never thought that those could be creepy, but the more he finds and the more he looks at them, the more he could swear they were staring at him.

He shakes it off as simple side effects of his exhaustion.  
  
One night, half nodding off, flicking through one of the more useless books, a sentence jumps out to him.  
Against the blotches and scratched lines around them, the words stand out starkly, clear as day.  
  
' _Don't take the mask._ '

He sits up, suddenly wide awake.

Amongst all the hectic of translating these things, he had almost forgotten about the one other artifact that had been found.  
Now more than ever he is sure that that had been the original Dream's mask.  
  
Something in him **_itches_** to hold it in his hands.

He shouldn't. He really shouldn't. But he's the only one likely to appreciate the significance of it, isn't he? No one else believes it to be authentic.

__-[_]-__

It's surprisingly easy to break into the vault rooms. Ranbob is on edge the whole time, sure that any moment he will be discovered, someone appearing to drag him away and punish him for his insolence. In the dark, lit only by moonlight filtering through miles of ocean water, he darts from cover to cover, skittish and ready to bolt at the first sign of trouble.  
The keycard he'd stolen from his mentor weighs heavy in his pocket, his hand trembles as he uses it to open the access door.  
The vault itself is dusty and smells like something had gone and died, and no one had bothered to clean it up. Boxes are stacked everywhere.  
Carefully, he shifts through the junk, hoping to find his prize. There are tons of old artifacts here that nobody thinks worth anything - remnants of archaic rail systems, outdated redstone machines, clothes made unrecognizable with time.  
At last, stowed underneath some leather that falls apart when he touches it, he finds it.  
  
The mask almost glows in the weak light, and the dot-eyes are black as coal. He dismisses the feeling that it is looking at him.  
  
He makes sure to lock the door behind him and quietly runs back. Around each corner, he expects to be caught, but miraculously nothing happens. He makes it to his room undetected. Once the door closes, he sinks against it, heartbeat loud in his ears. He feels restless. He feels like he could melt from sheer relief.  
He stays that way for a long time, mask in his lap, until the lights flicker on to simulate the arrival of dawn.  
  
The following days, he is even more skittish than usual. Every glance he receives seems to burn, every time someone speaks to him he tenses, ready for them to throw out accusations, telling him that they _know_ , telling him that he will be summarily _punished_.

Yet, the longer no one speaks up, makes no indication of anything wrong at all, the more the paranoia recedes.  
  
Then comes the giddiness.  
He did it! For the first time in his life, he did something no one would approve of, and he got away with it!  
He hums during breakfast, almost skips down the hallways.  
  
When his mentor asks what got him in such a good mood, he notices and tries to tone down his hyperactive demeanor. But still! He's so happy.

That night, Ranbob retrieves the mask from where he'd stashed it in the deepest corner of his desk drawer.  
  
He lays it on top of the opened journals and stares at it.

It doesn't deign to simply tell him it's secrets.

He takes it once again into his hands and moves closer to the desk light to inspect it.  
  
The mask is very round, for one. There are latches on the back, presumably for a leather band to be put through, but otherwise, it's a perfect circle with a subtle arch.  
For such an old artifact, it is in remarkably good condition too, only some scratches, no cracks. The surface is smooth and cool against his skin, the color off-white. When he taps against it with a claw, it clacks faintly.  
It's not porcelain or ceramic, he thinks, far too durable for that, but he also has no idea as to what it could be made of, if not that. It matches no material that he knows of. He brushes his fingers over the surface once again, on the inside this time, and his claws catch on delicate grooves.  
Curious, he tilts the mask against the light.  
He can make out the faint impressions of runes - in galactic even, so he can find out what they mean!  
Eagerly, he gets to work.  
He copies each rune onto paper painstakingly, tracing their shapes when he can't see.  
It is impressive enchantment work. So complex in fact, that he can only guess at the general function of the complex equations. He can make out 'Vision', 'Warmth', and 'Unbreaking'.  
Also, something about 'Return' and 'Ownership', though he can't be too sure of that since it seems intertwined with 'Host', which he's certain is a mistranslation.

Soon enough, there's nothing more to do. He's already sketched the mask from all angles, held down his observations in his own little notebook.  
  
The mask is just an inanimate object, but it seems to beckon him.

What would happen, if he just... **_put it on_**...  
  
The mask touches his face.  
It's dark, at first. His breath warms his own face, trapped by the curvature.  
Then, a barely perceptible hum, and suddenly he's seeing the world again. And not only that, he's seeing it _better_ than before! Everything is crisp and bright, and he could swear his field of vision is wider, too.  
He looks at the desk, follows the grain of the wood with his eyes, observes how each color is so much richer and deeper.  
So cool!  
No wonder Dream was said to never take it off!  
He plays around for a while, inspects everyday items as if seeing them for the first time.  
  
Eventually, however, he gets a headache. Probably from too much unfamiliar sensory input.  
He get's dizzy for a second when he moves to take the mask off, and he stumbles.  
When he rights himself, there are journals on the floor, pages scattered all over. He must have knocked against the desk in an effort to balance himself.  
Ah well. He sets the mask down and back into his drawer.

He goes to sleep and dreams of masks leering as darkness drags him down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was in great parts inspired by [this post](https://sezija.tumblr.com/post/641431466804445184/au-where-ranbob-goes-back-in-time-to-the-beginning), made by the awesome sezija, who is building out the original version of this AU. Check it out!
> 
> I am putting my own twists and plot of course, but I definitely still get some parts from those posts, and I think anyone that enjoys this story, would greatly enjoy those as well.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not me posting a new chapter after one whole month because real-life slammed through my update plans like a freight train-

Ranbob has always prided himself on his incredible memory.

In contrast to his more immediate ancestors, Ranbob has inherited scholar Ranboo's ability to perfectly recall everything and anything. And all his childhood, he'd been enamored with the trait.

He used to make a game of it; memorizing everything from mathematics to history texts easily, devouring the knowledge with but a glance. Once he'd seen something, it stayed in his head forever.

It had been honest fun, and just another factor that convinced everyone around him that he was destined to be a scholar. With such a talent, how could he not?

As he got older, however, his enthusiasm and eagerness to show off faded somewhat (since he had also noticed how it alienated the other kids his age). Yet, the pride stayed, for it was a uniquely useful ability.

His extraordinary mind has been a constant all his life.

One he had taken for granted.

That is why he's so bewildered, when one day, his memory fails him completely.

He has just stepped out of the door to his room, intending to run to the cafeteria for a quick snack, but instead finds himself standing in the middle of a completely different corridor, in a completely different position. There is no memory of what has happened in-between.

He sways, riding out some slight momentum. Just a second before he'd been standing still, to lock the door behind him.

His brain can't process the abrupt change - he is struck dumb and mute, paralyzed by the sheer impossibility.

It takes a while for him to even try and reorient himself. The first possibility that comes to his grasping mind is that this is a prank of sorts. Some sort of trick played on the loner kid.

He looks around, expecting someone to spring out any second, to laugh at him.

There is only eerie stillness. A near-silence underlined by distant muted chatter.

No one seems to be around. No one is there to point to as the culprit. No one is present who would able to shed some light as to  _ why _ or  _ how _ he had ended up here.

Then Ranbob notices the rays of the late-evening sun cutting through the glass of the tunnel arch, the reds of beginning dawn muddled by the miles of the ocean above the city. His blood runs cold.

The last he could remember, it had been mid-day.

No prank could account for that.

He shivers, hands clenching around his arms.

The situation doesn't feel quite real. Though, there is unmistakable evidence of the fact that it is.

The salty smell of poorly-filtered air, the way his dry tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth. Dust motes drift lazily through the corridor, made visible by water reflexes up above, which throw ever-changing patterns onto the carpet floor.

His clothes pull against his frame when he shifts, his shins itch where his boots have worn callouses into the skin. Recently, he's started another growth spurt and has yet to go to the tailor for new garments.

The details are too vivid. The feelings are too much.

This is real.

...

So why...

Can he not remember how he ended up here?

There's no recollection of events that could have caused this. Nix, nada, it's as if someone had plucked the relevant memories right out of his head without even bothering to fill up the holes.

He lingers, lost, head empty of possible explanations. A tight feeling creeps up his throat, and he blinks rapidly.

The silence tells him nothing. Standing there wasting time doesn't yield answers either.

He's only drawn out of his weird indecision by the slowly approaching steps of a group of people, startling him into awareness.

Hot panic floods him, as he realizes he's not willing to let anyone see him like this.

Whatever had occurred, he's in no condition to explain it to other people, when he doesn't even know what happened himself. He can't admit being confused, being helpless, being  _ useless _ -

Ranbob turns around and swiftly walks down the corridor.

He will try to figure out what happened -  _ if he hadn't just imagined it, oh he wants to have just imagined it _ \- but he's seen as weird enough already. No need to involve others just yet.

No need to confront this himself just yet.

__-[_]-__

Later, safely tucked into the comfort of his office, breathing calm and relaxed, Ranbob is quick to dismiss the experience.

With the stress of the experience dulled by the passage of time, suddenly it doesn't seem all that serious anymore. So what if he can't remember a bit of lost time? It's not the end of the world.

He's no stranger to all-nighters and their effects on a stressed brain. Surely the... 'blackout' was just the product of his overworked mind, warning him of his own exhaustion. He mulls over the explanation until it seems the only logical answer, until he convinces himself it's the truth. What else could it have been, right? You don't just spontaneously contract amnesia or something.

With that, he settles his anxieties.

He also decides to cut back on the time he spends doing research at night, and on the coffee. Those were bad habits anyway, he ought to have fixed his sleeping schedule a bit sooner.

That, he determines, should be enough to ward off another freak occurrence. This will be a one-time event.

...

(Except it happens again.)

__-[_]-__

One morning, barely yet awake, Ranbob sits at the table in the kitchen that he and his mentor share. In his hands are the reports of the crop yield of the season, compiled and analyzed, and ready to be presented to the council.

After he'd finished translating the journals, Ranbob had been tasked with much more menial tasks. Boring tasks, if he's honest. The tallying of resources, the writing of protocols of each day, the sorting and organizing of the local library. That was, after all, the purpose of the historian when not analyzing ancient texts.

Ranbob frowns when he looks over the numbers again. Their main crop yield seems to have come up extraordinarily low for this time of the year - practically impossible, with how much the plants had been genetically engineered to give the community the best harvest possible. Yet, the farms seem to have experienced some sort of failure - if something isn't done soon, they'll have to make use of the emergency rations, and those won't last forever. Worst case scenario, they'd have to risk trading with outsiders.

But... it isn't Ranbob's responsibility. He's just a historian, not a follower of Tubbo's teachings. Farming is not his expertise.

Putting the issue out of his mind, he makes to take a bite out of the bread and strawberry jam he'd prepared-

And promptly drops the bread spread-first onto his shirt when a loud bang startles him so badly he fumbles his grip.

He scrambles up from his chair, alarmed, turning towards the sound - towards the door, he notes.

There, in the doorway, tie askew and panting, is his mentor.

"Ranbob! Are you alright?!" The man takes but a moment to breath before hurrying towards his apprentice, subjecting him to a quick visual pat-down. His eyes linger on the red stain of jam Ranbob now sports.

The teenager, meanwhile, blinks at the other, mind too muddled to properly react to the unexpected fretting. Slowly, he replies "...Yes, I am. Alright. Why... wouldn't I be?"

His mentor, usually a more reserved person, sets his two hands on Ranbob's shoulders as if to reassure himself that the teen won't disappear into thin air. The man's eyes find his, and despite how uncomfortable the eye contact makes him, Ranbob spots the clear concern shining there.

"There's been a murder," his mentor confesses, breathless.

That statement takes a moment to sink in.

_ A- A murder? What in the world?? _

His mentor continues. "Someone was killed right in their bed during the night, and when you didn't show up for breakfast I thought- I thought-"

His mentor chokes up and then... hugs Ranbob.

It's... unexpected. The warmth is unexpected. Unfamiliar. Not even his father had hugged him much, preferring to show his affections through gifts and words rather than physical touch.

Ranbob tentatively hugs back. His mind is whirling - a murder, there has never been a murder, what the hell - but he has enough restraint and tact to not assault his mentor with questions right away.

"I'm alright," is what he thinks to say. Then - because that is the sort of thing you promise people to reassure them, right - he says, "I'm not going anywhere."

And his mentor only grips him tighter.

When they let go - his mentor clearly more reluctant than Ranbob, who had fought the urge to squirm past the one-minute-mark - his mentor tells him the important news.

Everyone is ordered to stay at their homes right now, while the guards investigate. The murder had occurred in the middle of the night, or at some point in the late evening, near the power plant. The victim in question was an electric worker, found dead with a stab wound.

No one knows who could have done it, or  _ why _ .

The wait is agonizing. His mentor tries to engage Ranbob in lighthearted small-talk, and it works somewhat until they inevitably run out of topics. Ranbob doesn't get out much, after all, and the one thing at the forefront of their minds, the murder, isn't an acceptable option.

Around the middle of the afternoon, however, there is a knock on the door.

Ranbob makes to open the door, but is ushered to sit back down by his mentor, who does it in his stead.

They both sigh in relief when it is neither the guards nor - idols forbid - the murderer themselves. It's just a council member, an older woman with gray hair and sharp eyes, who calmly informs them that they are not to worry, the murderer has been caught.

And that seems to be it.

Things go back to normal - or as normal as can be when there is a glaring rift where once there had been a member of the community. During sermons, they all still 'renew' their closeness, but even Ranbob notices that the previous bonds of trust had been badly shaken.

Then, it happens again.

This time he finds himself outside during the early hours of the morning, near the powerplant. His hands are inexplicably stiff and aching, and he knows only that he'd gone to bed, as usual, the night before. Once again, there is no one around to give him answers.

He runs. He tells himself twice is not evidence of a pattern, twice is just enough to be a coincidence.

On top of that, another dead person has been found.

And despite the fact that it had been on the opposite side of the city, not even near where he'd awoken, Ranbob can't help but wonder...

It couldn't have been him right? It had nothing to do with him, right, he wasn't capable of murder, and anyway, the culprit had been caught. ( _ There's a second murderer. Or the first one caught wasn't guilty, and all along it was  _ **_you._ ** )

The uncertainty eats at him.

This time, they find the culprit even quicker.

The council makes a bit of a spectacle of her trial - the whole community is there, and the woman's pleading cries of 'innocent, I'm innocent-" turn Ranbob's stomach.

He doesn't stay for the execution.

To avoid the stress of it all, he buries himself with researching any possible explanations for his condition. His ancestors had memory issues, so they should know how to deal with them, right?

Except none of their little strategies prevent him from experiencing the 'blackouts', as he's taken to calling the phenomenon, a third time. Not the one after that, or any of the subsequent ones that follow.

Even when he is otherwise wide awake. Regardless of the time of day, in the morning, at night, or at noon, he could startle into awareness having lost hours at a time.

It's concerning. It's... frightening.

He doesn't dare to ask anyone if they noticed. He doesn't want to give anyone any reason to label him as 'loony', or worse,  _ 'useless' _ , so he keeps it all to himself.

He isn't quite ready to admit it to himself, but he's  _ so scared _ .

On top of it all, he's apparently made some girl very mad during one of those blackout-periods.  _ Somehow _ . And now her friends are throwing him mean looks whenever they have meals in the cafeteria together, and he doesn't know how he's supposed to deal with that on top of everything else. He doesn't understand how they think they're affecting him when he's basically a self-made social outcast already.

He tries to distract himself.

He spends his free hours noting down theories in regards to the SMP of the past. He throws himself into analyzing the journals once again, picking apart the words, and wondering at the meaning behind them.

He tries to set Dream's stories in context to the major events he knows about - most of the happy stories seem to date to before the first disc wars, just Dream and Sapnap and George and Bad, and someone named Callahan, who Ranbob has never heard about. It's... bewildering. The stories are wistful, and despite the shaky scrawl of the words, the fondness Dream must have held for these people shines through. It's so... incompatible, with the fierce disdain Ranbob knows everyone had for the tyrant, at the time of his imprisonment.

Reading about such close friendships, knowing how it would end, gives him a funny feeling in his stomach.

But he shakes it off. Dream is the villain, he deserved everything he got.

Outside in the city, things escalate.

By now, everyone can tell from the decreased portions at dinner.

The followers of Tubbo are tight-lipped about the farm failures, but everyone notices the increased rate of council meetings, and Ranbob, who is going over the numbers, knows for a fact that it isn't looking good for them.

If only his blackouts wouldn't interfere with his performance too. More than once he'd had to report delays on some deadlines because the time he was supposed to be spending on  _ projects _ is instead just a big gaping hole in his memory. His mentor is understanding, the council less so.

He's jittery all the time now, and he's started making self-comforting chirps, which his mentor had commented on more than once. Just yesterday he stared fixedly at a decorative grass block, fighting the sudden,  _ intense _ urge to pick it up. Other times, he feels irrational anger. Why is this  _ happening _ to him, what had he ever done to  _ deserve _ this? He wants to _ snarl and  _ **_smash and_ ** -

He always controls himself, of course, scolding his own mind for even shortly entertaining those behaviors. He's supposed to be a civilized member of their great city, not some... ender beast.

But that doesn't make the stress go away. If anything, it seems to exacerbate it, and his ancestor's strategies are no help. Not 'writing down what little you remember!', not 'taping little sticky notes in places he's sure to encounter them', not 'making yourself detailed schedules to follow'.

The only tip he can glean anything from is the one about amassing comfort items.

Now, at night, he crawls into a nest made of blankets and pillows.

And then he falls asleep curled around Dream's mask.

Is it weird? Yes, he supposes, but there's something inexplicably relaxing about the white disk, and he can't help but seek it out time and again. It had actually started when he'd been studying it late at night, so late he'd fallen asleep with the artifact still in his grasp.

He'd awoken better rested than he'd been in a long time, even if later that day he'd still experienced a blackout.

He makes an effort to hide the mask when he's out, of course, it _is_ illegally acquired contraband, after all.

But otherwise, in the privacy of his study, he's taken to wearing it. The improved vision greatly helps alleviate the headaches he gets from staring at words and numbers for hours on end, and touching it somehow  **_soothes_ ** his harried mind. The rasp of claws against smooth white makes him forget his fears and doubts, even if just for a little while.

It's sort of like a double-life at this point: During the day, he'll be skittish, uncertain, half the time not-there. But at night he can seek shelter in his journals and the mask.

He's reached a sort of equilibrium: The blackouts are not growing more frequent, and the friend group has lost interest in tormenting him, too busy with the community's problems which require everyone to lend a helping hand.

...

Then, one morning, he wakes up seemingly as usual. He sits up, yawns leisurely, and his eyes roam around his brightly lit room. 

For a few moments, he doesn't even register that something is wrong.

Slowly, like a spider crawling up his spine, the discrepancies impress themselves upon his mind. The disturbed writing supplies - he makes an effort to keep everything as neat as possible. The clothes thrown out of opened cabinets and discarded carelessly on the floor. The scuff marks everywhere, the opened drawers of his desk.

Someone had gone through his belongings.

And the first thought that hits him-

_ Please no, I need to know, is it gone isitgone- _

**_The mask._ **

He tears from his bed, fumbles with the tangled covers, and scrambles towards his desk. His trembling hands leave scratches on the wood as he claws at the drawer, open open  _ open _ , he doesn't need these papers they are  _ in the way _ -

Unblemished white greets him.

A monumental weight falls from his shoulders. Ranbob feels lightheaded from relief, takes the mask reverently from its confines, and clutches it to his chest. No one had taken the mask, no one had stolen what was  **_his_ ** -

“Ranbob.” He is drawn out of his hazy racing thoughts by the call of his name.   
  
His mentor is once again standing in a doorway, disheveled, a mirror to that scene not two months ago.    
  
But the look in his eyes is everything but warm.   
  
“How… how could you,” his mentor rasps, and Ranbob stares at the tears that roll down his cheeks. What in the world? He glances down at the mask.   
(It grins back at him.)   
“Look,” Ranbob begins, “I’m sorry about stealing the mask, nobody else was going to do anything with it-”   
His mentor scoffs, though even that sounds warbly, awash with tears. “Quit playing dumb, boy. You’ve done much worse than - than steal something, I can’t believe I - I ever thought of you- “   
  
His mentor snarls softly, clenching his hands.

“You’re coming with me. To - to face your crimes.”   
  
And Ranbob doesn’t understand, it’s just a mask, nothing else, but his mentor already has a grip on his wrist, and he’s dragging him out of the room and no-

His body  **_moves_ ** .   
  
Claws flash and suddenly there’s red  _ red redredredred  _ **_red_ ** **_  
_ ** **_  
_ ** The grip on his wrist goes slack.   
  
A body tumbles to the floor, gracelessly.   
  
Ranbob stands there.   
  
The thing in front of him doesn’t move. Dark liquid spreads out, soaks into the floorboards.   
  
Ranbob’s knees give out, and he sits down heavily.   
He can’t tear his eyes away. The picture in front of him has lost all meaning, yet he can’t look away.

…   
  
He forgot to eat breakfast.

....

He isn’t particularly hungry right now.   
  
…

  
The dark liquid reaches him, climbing up his cloth like so much seawater. He should probably go change himself, right?

He stumbles into his room, collapses more than sinks into the bed.   
  
He doesn’t have the energy to change. Oh well.   
  
He observes with a hollow stare how liquid smears all over the sheets, staining the off-white with stark patterns of red and pink.   
  


...Why.

Why had he done that.  _ Why had he done that? _

He doesn’t want to think.

But reality creeps up on him, just like the blood. _  
_ _  
_ _ His mentor. With whom he lived together for years, who fed him and held debates with him and whom he loved- _ _  
_ _  
_ He hadn’t wanted to. He couldn’t have-   
No.    
He hadn’t wanted to. Right? Right. There was no reason to - not over a petty crime.   
  
But…   
it was as if his body had had a mind of its own. As if it wasn’t him that had led the attack, not his mind behind the steering wheel. Like it wasn’t him that murdered- __  
_  
_ **_But you did. You did kill him._ **

And for the first time, stark against his own numb horror, Ranbob notices the presence of  _ another _ . A lazy amusement and a cold indifference that can only belong to something (someone?) else, something that feels  _ pleasure _ from his actions rather than despair.

And worst of all, he recognizes it. From late nights spent translating journals, a feeling that nudged him towards possible solutions. From wearing the mask, head clear but for an approving hum. From the fading static after each blackout episode, where oftentimes he felt like he’d been pushed just slightly out of place, then improperly realigned.

Alien laughter curls in his mind, so different from his own tumultuous thoughts, and he gets the impression that is mocking him, for being so clueless, for being so senseless until now. 

He feels sick.

**_Finally figured it out, took you long enough_ ** .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Introducing: the dreamon! He's a right bastard.  
> If you liked the chapter, why not give it a comment!  
> Also, I have a tumblr now, where I post art and maybe snippets idk yet-  
> [Here!](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/convergentdreams)  
> 


End file.
